Florida's early voting comes to a controversial end

TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s early-voting period, which was shortened from two weeks to eight days last year by the Republican-led Legislature, came to a controversial conclusion over the weekend.

On Sunday, the Florida Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in federal court in Miami, urging the court to order extended early-voting times in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties — three counties with roughly a third of the state’s Democrats.

The total of votes cast indicate that more than half of the Floridians who will vote in this year’s presidential race will have done so before Election Day.

“The extraordinarily long lines deterred or prevented voters from waiting to vote,” the lawsuit said. “Some voters left the polling sites upon learning of the expected wait, and others refused to line up altogether. These long lines and extreme delays unduly and unjustifiably burdened the right to vote.”

There is no indication how the court will handle the lawsuit and whether it will act before Election Day.

Five counties — Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Orange, Hillsborough and Pinellas — responded on their own by allowing voters to come to the local supervisor of elections’ office on Sunday to cast an in-person absentee ballot, which is a procedure that can be done in any local elections office during normal business hours until the polls close on Tuesday.

In a separate action, a judge in Orange County extended early-voting on Sunday at a Winter Park site that had been closed on Saturday because of a suspicious package.

Democrats and groups aligned with them had urged Gov. Rick Scott to extend the early-voting period after witnessing long lines and waiting times of up to six hours in some of the state’s largest counties. Scott rejected that plea.

The early-voting period is critical to the Democrats because the latest data shows they are not likely to duplicate the advantage they had in early voting in the 2008 presidential race, where Barack Obama carried the state by a 2.8 percent margin.

Based on an analysis of the 2008 race in Florida by Associate Professor Michael McDonald of George Mason University, the Democrats had more than a 363,000-vote margin in the 4.3 million early or absentee ballots that were cast. It represented 45.6 percent of the pre-Election Day vote to the Republicans’ 37.3 percent. And much of the Democrats’ advantage came from the two-week early voting period rather than the absentees, where the GOP was stronger.

Other analyses put the Democrats’ margin at closer to 280,000 votes in 2008.

But, in either case, based on the latest total of 4.42 million early and absentee votes, the Democrats are heading into Tuesday’s election with roughly a 160,000-vote advantage. It represents a 42.7 percent margin to the GOP’s 39 percent of those votes.

The impact of the shortened early-voting period is also apparent in the latest numbers. Early voting is down from 2008 — from 2.6 million votes to 2.4 million. Absentees are up from 2008 — at least 2 million to the 1.74 milllion cast in the previous presidential race.

Nevertheless, the total of votes cast indicate that more than half of the Floridians who will vote in this year’s presidential race will have done so before Election Day.

The estimate is based on the assumption that roughly 8.9 million Florida voters will participate in the election — based on a 75 percent turnout in line with the last two presidential elections in the state.

The pre-Election Day voting is part of a continuing trend in the state. In 2008, 52 percent of the 8.4 million voters who voted in the general election did it in the same way.

Last modified: November 4, 2012
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